Hard drive issues

Hey everyone, my apologies if this topic has already been covered elsewhere. I’m looking for some serious help here—I’m trying to wipe my current Windows installation and set up a fresh one. Everything seems to be going fine when I boot from the disc, but the moment I hit Enter on that blue setup screen, it hits a wall. It acts like there isn't even a hard drive connected to the system. I tried creating a floppy drive for the RAID drivers and rebooting to try the F6 method, but when I actually press F6, nothing happens—it just ignores me completely. My hardware setup is an ASUS p4s800d-x motherboard paired with a Seagate 80 hard drive. How do I bypass this roadblock and finally get Windows installed? Thanks in advance.

I didn't quite follow you—are you trying to install Windows from a DVD? Did you go into the BIOS and make sure the boot priority is set to the optical drive instead of the hard drive?

Yeah, I went ahead and set the DVD drive as my primary boot device.

It looks like your OnChip sat settings in the BIOS are totally messed up (check that Main tab)—you should probably switch the RAID mode over to IDE or whatever other options you've got sitting there.

In the BIOS, the OnChip sat setting is set to Enable (you’ve got two choices there: Enable or Disable)

Are you using a USB keyboard? You should probably check if your Legacy USB support is set to Enabled—it’s under the USB Configuration section on the Advanced tab. It ought to respond when you hit F6; just don't go shoving the floppy drive into the PC right away—wait until the system actually asks for it. Did you pack the driver onto the floppy using that Makedisk utility?

I don't have a USB keyboard handy, and regarding the floppy—since I'm working from the motherboard's CD, I used the RAID driver and the option to create a floppy disk to get it ready. Now, when I hit F6, I select S =Specify additional device, but it just spits back this error: "The disk you have supplied does not provide any relevant supported files." All I've got is an F3 option to quit.

Just wondering—at what exact moment did you pop that floppy into the drive? I'm trying to figure out if this error pops up when you first launch the Windows setup while the disk is already sitting in the floppy drive.

Seagate 80GB... man, that thing is ancient. I really hope that drive isn't on its last legs. Depending on which version of Windows you're trying to install, you might want to run a few quick tests just to make sure it hasn't kicked the bucket (assuming you actually manage to get Windows up and running, that is).

I shoved the floppy in right after clicking "boot from CD"... Basically, I'm dropping the diskette in just moments before the whole thing hits a Blue Screen of Death.

Just wait until the installer actually asks you to pop the floppy in—don't go ahead and shove it in early.

I'm running into the exact same wall—so much so that I actually decided to try installing Windows 7 just to see if that would fix things. The installation starts off perfectly fine, right up until the very last stretch during the Expending Windows phase. As soon as that progress bar hits 100%, everything goes south—the Blue Screen of Death pops up with that dreaded "preventing damage" message. When I reboot, the system tries to roll back Windows, and I'm stuck watching that green loading bar flicker past over and over again, telling me the installation failed. It just loops through that failure cycle repeatedly before hitting the blue screen once more. Honestly? At this rate, I’m about ready to toss this piece of junk into a scrap heap; the whole ordeal has been an absolute nightmare for my nerves.

That was a brutal hit.

After a massive, drawn-out battle, I finally managed to get Windows 7 installed. It turns out—and it’s entirely possible—that my DVD drive was just being temperamental this whole time; now that Windows is actually up and running, I'm seeing that it only takes two or three tries to get a disc to load properly.

It’s pretty easy to fix if he’s as old as a vintage vinyl record—his eyesight has definitely seen better days. 😁

So basically 😁